testing your soil for nutrients gives you valuable information about your soil
which you can use to optimize plant growth and grow some really nice healthy plants in
your garden now we will be using the soil master soil testing kit and
I'll provide a link in the video description so that you can buy this product this
product is available very cheap on Amazon and in this kit you'll find a
lot of tubes which you will use to test your soil nutrient and this kit also
has a lot of these tablets that you will see shortly and these tablets are
basically some chemicals that let to you test your soil and make sure that you
have adequate nutrients in your soil now why do you need to do a soil test
well, plants need three things to survive the first and most important thing they need is
water and sunlight without these two things you really cannot grow plants
now the third thing that you need other than water and sunlight are nutrients now you can add
nutrients to your soil either by adding organic matter or by adding fertilizers
whether organic or inorganic and that's what really causes your plants to grow well
and produce a lot of fruits vegetables flowers whatever you may want from the
plant so doing a soil test helps you make sure that your soil has
adequate nutrients for the plants to grow and flourish so having seen the kit
let's proceed to the tests so the first step is to take a soil sample now it is
recommended that you dig a little bit and if you find his little helpers in your soil
just make sure they're tossed away to some other part of the bed where can
be helpful and and then take a handful of soil and what is recommended is that the soil
should be a little moist but not wet so this is the kind of soil that you can
use for testing they also recommend that you leave the soil overnight and
then begin your test so let's start with the first test- the first test is one of
the most important test called the pH test which basically measures how acidic or alkaline
your soil is now why do we need to do that well for plans to absorb nutrients
from the soil the soil needs to have the correct pH so for example most of the
vegetables thrive when the pH of the soil is between the numbers six and seven now
I shortly explain you want those numbers are because you do you really need to
have a test card or a reference card to see those numbers
so to do the pH test you add one test tablet of the pH test into the testing tube
and then you add a little bit of the soil sample to it now when you're
choosing the soil or when you're adding the soil just make sure you don't add
any wood chips or large particles
if you wish you could sift the soil which means that you remove the large
particles and only use the fine particles and it's also recommended that you use
distilled water or at least filtered water so that the test results are accurate
Tap water contains a lot of added salts which might give you a false
result now once you shake the solution very well with the soil you let it stand
for a few seconds about thirty seconds to a minute and once the soil settles down
you need to match the color of the solution on the top with the pH level as
you can see the pH level is a little bit towards six as you saw in the picture
now let's take a soil sample from another bed and remember that if you have multiple areas in
your garden you need to do one Test per area and let's wait for the
solution to settle down. It usually takes about a minute for the soil to
settle down and here you can see when we measure the pH level it's about seven
which is again ideal so as long as your pH is between six and seven you're good
however some plants do like higher or lower pH now changing soil pH is very
easy you add Garden lime to make the soil more alkaline and sulfur to make
the soil more acidic now remember that some plants do prefer acidic soil like
blueberries so be careful what you're doing so let's now jump to the nutrients
test the first nutrient we will test is nitrogen for preparing the test solution
dissolve two Flock-ex tablets in the water and then add the soil the Floc-ex
tablets let the soil settle down towards the bottom of the cup so that you can
use the clear solution that's on the top to do all the tests so once you dissolve
the two tablets and the soil settles down you will be using this
solution for the rest of your nitrogen phosphorus and potassium test
we will now add the nitrate test tablet to the testing tube
now the solution that we created earlier will be used for all the 3 tests
so make sure you save the water from the previous tests as you can see here
we need to reach the mark that is there in the tube and ones that mark is
reached just make sure that you have just enough water and then make sure the
solution is really well mixed and once this settles down you can measure
the level of nitrogen and as you can see here here it's very low it really matches the
low nitrogen level and this is a very true indication of the nitrogen levels
because most californian soils for example are deficient in nitrogen you
need to make sure that you have adequate nitrogen in the soil so as you can see
here these are the ways to add nitrogen to your soil and your plants will really
benefit from that some of these are organic sources and some of these are
inorganic sources and whether you want to use organic or inorganic fertilizers
really depends on your choice the plants do not distinguish between either
fertilizer types
so the next important nutrient that plants need
is phosphorus now let's go ahead and do the phosphorus test in a similar manner and
then you can see here the chart now corresponds to phosphorus that's quite
high so our soil is really not deficient in phosphorus in this case and remember
that you need to test soil from various locations in your garden to arrive at any
conclusion now if you do find your soil deficient in phosphorus which is
essential for flowering and producing bulbs you need to make sure that you either
add bone meal or rock phosphate or superphosphate once again
whether you use organic sources or not is entirely up to you you are the best
judge
and the final nutrient that plants need is potassium and in this test you can see
that the level of potassium in our soil matches high which means that they have
adequate potassium levels note that most soils have a lot of potassium and
phosphorus its nitrogen that most of the soils lack because plants use a lot of
nitrogen when they grow so with this soil test you can really make sure that your soil
has adequate potassium which is really good for growing plants produce a lot of
roots and tubers and here are the common sources of potassium that you can add
to your soil again some of these are organic sources and some of them are inorganic
sources and both of them work really well for growing plants in your garden
so there we have it
that's our soil test results and I hope you like this video and I hope this
encourages you to do a soil test if you're not going success in your garden
and especially if you're growing in the ground it does make a lot of sense to do
a soil test to make sure that you're growing your plants in the most optimum
conditions now if you're growing in containers you can still do this test
and add amendments to your container soil but in any case doing a soil test really
helps you understand your soil and in my case for example most of the soil in my
garden was deficient nitrogen so I knew that I had to really add a lot of
nitrogen sources to my soil which meant adding a lot of manure compost and some
nitrogen fertilizers so that was our video on the soil test and do let me know
what you think about this do you do a soil test for your garden or do you just
a lot of organic material and give it your best shot to let me know I'll see
you again soon
happy gardening